


Charlotte the Great and Powerful

by Evandar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Ambition, Coming of Age, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Female Protagonist, Genderswap, Independent Harry, Manipulation, Master of Death, Slytherin Harry, Slytherins Being Slytherins, Underage Kissing, Unlikeable Main Character, bamf female character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 13:55:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3694820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Her whole life has been about gaining power through struggle and sacrifice and manipulation of the only thing she has going for her (Charlotte’s a terrible person beneath the pretty face and she knows it).</i>
</p><p>Charlotte wants to be more than the girl from the cupboard and she's not above using others to gain power.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Charlotte the Great and Powerful

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I own nothing.

** Piers Polkiss – 1987 **

Charlotte sits quietly by Aunt Petunia’s side and keeps her head down, listening as the adults talk over her. Miss Briggs had decided that their class’ play for the end of year was going to be Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and she’d decided that Charlotte was to play the part of Snow White. Charlotte had been excited for all of five minutes, hearing that, before realising that Dudley would tell and she wouldn’t be allowed and that there was no point in being excited about anything.

Dudley has told, and he’s sitting on Aunt Petunia’s other side, sucking smugly on a lolly, while Aunt Petunia hisses about rewarding bad behaviour.

Charlotte sneaks a look up at Miss Briggs. Her favourite teacher – and she is Charlotte’s favourite, because she’s young and pretty and interesting and doesn’t pay attention to the Dursleys like all the other teachers do – looks like she’d trying not to laugh at something. Charlotte hopes she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to be stuck in the cupboard for a week for doing something freakish again.

“Mrs Dursley,” Miss Briggs says, “I understand your concerns, but really, Charlotte is perfect for the role.” She taps a finger against the copy of _Grimm’s Fairy Tales_ on her desk. “Skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as a raven? She’s the only girl in the class who really fits the description, and I’m sure that if she’s given some motivation – a show of what good behaviour can earn her – then she’ll be much more eager to toe the line.”

Aunt Petunia sniffs. “Very well,” she says. “On your head be it. When she ruins it, you won’t be able to say I didn’t warn you.”

She strides out of the classroom, towing Dudley behind her, and Charlotte scrambles up out of her chair to follow. She turns back at the door, though, and mouths a quick _“thank you”_ to Miss Briggs. Her teacher winks.

…

Prince Charming is Piers Polkiss and he’s about as charming as a newt at the best of times, but he’s far, far better than Dudley when you can get him on his own. He seems about as happy as Charlotte about the fact that they’re going to have to kiss – or pretend to; Dudley is full of ideas of what they could do instead, but Mrs Briggs is insistent that Piers do none of them. Apparently, true love’s kiss doesn’t involve spitting on the princess.

So, they haven’t rehearsed it. They’ve done the rest, and Charlotte’s quite fond of the bit where she has to bite into the apple and choke. She doesn’t get many chances to be dramatic and Mrs Briggs tells her that she’s got talent.

She quite likes her costume too. It’s a blue and yellow dress with puffed sleeves and it’s being kept at school so that Dudley doesn’t ‘accidentally’ ruin it.

She’s never worn a dress before. She likes the way it swishes around her ankles and pools around her when she collapses, gasping, to the floor. She thinks she’d like to wear more dresses when she’s older – maybe she can persuade Aunt Petunia to buy her some from Oxfam – and that gives her something to daydream about when she’s doing the dishes. She thinks of silks and satins and lace; things she’s seen glimpses of in Aunt Petunia’s knicker-drawer while putting the laundry away, but that she’s never been allowed to touch in case she ruins them with freakishness. She thinks they’ll be soft. Her costume looks like it’s satin and it’s soft, but she doesn’t know for sure.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s pretty and Charlotte thinks that she might look pretty in it because Piers and some of the other boys look at her differently when she’s in it. She’s not Charlotte when she’s in it – or maybe she is, but a different Charlotte; one who holds her head high and her back straight and gestures with practised elegance – so maybe that’s why they all look at her like she’s someone they haven’t seen before.

…

The morning of the performance, she slips into her costume for the last time and sits still while Miss Briggs brushes out her hair and fixes it up in an elegant style with a little tiara at the front. Charlotte stares at her reflection when she’s allowed to see. 

She doesn’t recognise herself. This is the Charlotte she sometimes dreams of being. The powerful, pretty Charlotte who lives in a manor instead of a cupboard and who doesn’t bow to anyone.

Miss Briggs settles her hands lightly on her shoulders. “The fairest of them all,” she teases. “You’re a very pretty girl, Charlotte Potter.”

Charlotte thinks she might believe her.

,,,

She gets her true love’s kiss at the end of the play. Piers’ face is red and his lips are dry and rough, but he’s very gentle and he doesn’t spit on her, so Charlotte doesn’t mind. The rest of the school claps, and so do the grown-ups, and she curtseys at the end instead of bowing. Princesses curtsey, even she knows that.

The next day, Piers is friends with Dudley again, and they’re chasing her around the playground and calling her an ugly freak that no one likes. It’s nothing new, and it’s mostly true. She doesn’t have friends and she knows she never will (as long as she lives in Little Whinging) and she knows she’s a freak because she jumps onto the roof of the school and no one can do that.

But she’s not ugly and she knows that now. She’s seen that she isn’t, and she’s seen that things can be different when she isn’t. She’s seen a form of power in the way people look at her when she has her hair up and her back straight – when she’s Charlotte the Great and not Charlotte the Mouse – and she now that she’s seen it she refuses to ever forget it. She takes to practising her gestures in the school library; she sits up straight and balances books on her head where no one can see her; she practises sitting with her knees together and reaching for things so that it looks graceful and laughing with her hand over her mouth.

She’s going to be Charlotte the Great for real one day, and when she is, she’ll never be alone again.

** Bartemius Crouch Jr – 1994 **

She slides into the back of the classroom and studies the foe glass on the wall. There are cloudy faces in it and the impression of staring eyes, but nothing she can put a finger on; no face that she recognises above all others.

That’s strange, she thinks, because _someone_ is trying to kill her this year – not exactly a novel experience, actually, but this one is definitely a bit more direct – and the person masquerading as her Defence professor is her number one candidate. But perhaps foe glasses don’t work on people wearing invisibility cloaks. She approaches the stairs to the Defence office and climbs, gripping the rail with one hand and her wand with the other.

The wizard she finds there is the one from Dumbledore’s pensieve. He’s blond and blue-eyed, handsome but slightly wild looking, and he levels his wand at her face when she opens the door. He can’t see her, but he knows she’s there, and his aim in spite of that is incredible.

She lets the cloak slide back from her face. “Professor,” she says.

His wand jerks slightly, but he doesn’t lower it even though he looks like he wants to. He stares at her a lot, she’s noticed. Mrs Malfoy told her once that she looks remarkably like her grandmother – the famous beauty Dorea Potter nee Black – and Charlotte supposes that the Moody imposter agrees with her.

The map she took from the Weasley twins as a thank you for saving their sister in second year has told her that this man is Bartemius Crouch. He looks little like the straight-laced man she saw at the World Cup, but that means little. He could still be a relative.

(Bartemius Crouch had a Death Eater son who died in Azkaban, but stranger things have happened than murderers coming back from the dead to try and kill her.)

He’s also the best teacher she’s ever had for Defence. There’s something sad about that. ‘Greatest school of magic in the word,’ she thinks _not_. The way that he looks at her is unnerving but not entirely unpleasant. It’s given her a little power over him, enough to figure out why he’s doing this, and facing him is less intimidating than facing a Basilisk.

“Miss Potter,” he replies. “Come in.”

She does and she closes the door after her, letting her father’s cloak slip down off her shoulders. She’s still wearing her school uniform, despite it being the middle of the night, and she sees his gaze fix for a moment on the green and silver of her tie.

It strikes her that this is a truly, truly stupid idea, but she doesn’t let that realisation show on her face. She’s a Slytherin and somewhere inside is Charlotte the Great, and _she_ eats men like Bartemius Crouch for breakfast. She smiles and tips her head to the side. “I was hoping, Professor, for a little help with the egg. I know what they’re going to take – who, I should say, sorry – but I’m finding it hard to get my hands on some gillyweed.”

He’s not expecting that, and his wand lowers slowly. His tongue flicks at the corner of his mouth and his gaze drops again to the knot of her tie. Her cloak is still covering everything below that, and she’s seen him glance there as well once or twice – if he is the Bartemius Crouch that ‘died’ in Akaban, then he was nineteen when he went there. She wonders if he ever really managed to grow up.

…

She rescues Millie from the lake and helps her best friend swim to shore. Madam Pomfrey is waiting for them with towels, and Crouch is there, disguised as Moody; she smiles at him as she receives her towel, and combs her fingers through her wet hair.

She finds a beetle clinging to one of her curls. She crushes it and tosses it back into the water, and takes a hot chocolate gratefully from one of the Slytherin prefects. She’s the first contestant back with her hostage; Delacour is sobbing inconsolably amongst the Beauxbatons students.

“I’m what you’d miss most?” Millie asks her. 

Charlotte smiles. “Yes.”

It’s true. Millie’s the only person in Slytherin who didn’t judge her for the scar on her forehead. She’s the only one who understands what it’s like to be powerless and the desperate craving to change it. She’s Charlotte’s confident and cohort and she’s utterly irreplaceable, because her ambitions mirror Charlotte’s own.

…

She slips into Crouch’s office that night to thank him properly. His kisses are approaching reverent and his hands are scorching through her uniform. She’s tempted almost to take it off and let him touch her properly, but she won’t; she’s not some naïve Gryffindor tart. She’s learned enough in Slytherin to know that a witch’s virginity is a powerful thing and that if she wants to get anywhere then it must be kept until the right time and the right wizard. 

Barty, her Barty, is not the right wizard. He’s as close as she can get for now, and when she pushes up his sleeve and presses her lips to the Dark Mark, she knows that he’s sorry for what’s going to happen and that he’s hers forever as long as she lives and his secret is kept.

She’s cruel, though, and he knows it, and Aunt Petunia isn’t the only one with secret, lacy things hidden in drawers anymore. She takes to wearing some of her more provocative underthings in his classes, just to see his stolen eye linger on the way they cup and caress her skin. She smiles at him and lowers her lashes and says nothing at all.

…

She let herself grow fond of him, in a fashion, and of their stolen kisses and his longing glances, and when she hears that his soul is gone forever and that the Dementors just swooped in and took it, she cries. Dumbledore and his hangers on think she’s crying because Voldemort is back and she lets them believe it even though, really? She doesn’t care.

Barty, her Barty, is gone.

** Sirius Black – 1995 **

Her godfather is, out of all the residents in this house of horrors, the only one who actually cares about _her_ and not the scar on her forehead or the reputation that precedes her. The Weasleys would probably be nice if she was more orphanly and waifish – and a Gryffindor as she was so clearly expected to be; Lupin was devastated when he met her and discovered that she was not her father reborn into a female body and now doesn’t know how to react around her; the rest seem to be trying not to be too obvious when they stare at her scar.

The other ‘children’ in the house are Gryffindors all and very much caught up in their house prejudices; far too much to see that she doesn’t give a damn about Houses. They treat her like a Slytherin – Granger and she-Weasley in particular act as if they’re _threatened_ \- and Charlotte discovers that that only makes her less eager to be martyred for their noble cause.

So she sequesters herself with portraits and learns about the side of her family that only Mrs Malfoy has told her about. She meets the painting of her grandmother and realises that, actually, Mrs Malfoy had understated the resemblance if anything.

They have the same thick, wild curls and fine brows; the same elegant hands and narrow, tapered fingers. They’re both petite, though Charlotte is showing signs of becoming more buxom, and their facial features are identical. The only difference, outside of eye colour – Dorea’s were grey while Charlotte has inherited the killing curse green of her mother – is the expression of haughtiness that Dorea bestows on her when she admits her mother was a mudblood. It’s an expression that Charlotte has practised in front of mirrors until she feels ridiculous, but one that Dorea seems to have been born to.

She returns it with a comment about “fresh blood _occasionally_ preventing the line from degeneration” and after that the ladies of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black whisper tips on etiquette and blackmail at her from their frames. They are a delight and Charlotte rapidly comes to love them.

She comes to love Sirius too. He’s completely mad, of course, but he’s the only one who seems to think that she can ever be more than James Potter’s daughter or the Girl-Who-Lived. He tells her about the Blacks, and their family tree and traditions. He tells her about the summer gods above and the winter gods below and of the spirits of magic that were once worshipped but now aren’t (except by Dark Wizards and, apparently, him).

He slips a ring on her finger with a band shaped like silver ravens and a sapphire as dark as night. “It’s the heir’s ring,” he says, “and it’s yours. I can’t give you much but I can give you that.” He grins, mad as anything – as Barty – and her heart aches for him. “The ladies of the House of Black have always been formidable,” he says with a gesture at the walls, “and you fit right in.”

Lupin hisses at dinner that Dumbledore wouldn’t approve. Sirius says – bluntly – that Dumbledore can go and fuck himself and that if Sirius’ mother hadn’t managed to stop him from being a Black (she’d tried, apparently, but that decision had been her father-in-law’s and he’d refused) then Dumbledore certainly wouldn’t. Charlotte just rubs her thumb over the stone and thinks of how worlds will rise and fall and of power to be gained. She’s ever so much closer now to Charlotte the Great and that makes her smile.

…

The Weasley twins are precocious boors, although they’re certainly the pick of the bunch for a sense of humour, and at Christmas they enchant sprigs of mistletoe to hover above the heads of unsuspecting Order members. Sirius, being Sirius, finds it hilarious until he is targeted because he’s just intimidating enough – just broken enough – for the majority of the Order to avoid him on principle.

He’s never really been able to explain how he’s _not_ Dark, mostly because – to Charlotte, at least – he certainly is. She wonders if he understands that you can be Dark and not kiss Voldemort’s robe hems, but then she decides that he doesn’t. Certainly, no one else in this house does.

In the end she’s the one to approach him. He’s handsome and he reminds her of Barty – poor, poor Barty – and, strictly speaking, he’s been her Lord since he put the heir’s ring on her finger in the summer. He’s taller than Barty, though, and there isn’t a handy desk to sit on, so she has to stand on tip-toe to kiss him and that means she has to press against him. She raises a hand to balance herself on his chest and tries to keep her body angled away from him as much as she can.

(He’s not the right wizard either.)

The mistletoe explodes into a shower of glitter above their heads and she pulls away, smiling ruefully. It will take forever to get out of her hair. Sirius is staring at her wide-eyed and apparently terrified, and she drops idly into a curtsey before him. Mrs Weasley hisses something disapproving, but she’s drowned out by the portraits complementing her on her form. 

Her curtseys have improved since she was seven.

“Good Yule to you, cousin,” she says – because it _is_ Yule and he _is_ her cousin as much as he’s her godfather, and slowly, ever-so-slowly, he actually begins to relax.

“Good Yule,” he replies. He’s staring at her like she’s as crazy as he is, and she thinks that maybe she might be. The rest of the Order seem to think so. That’s hardly a bad thing, however, because if the Order of the Phoenix is what sanity is like then she never wants to know what it feels like.

…

He kisses her again later, in the library, over books that she’d probably get sent to Azkaban for reading. He cups her face in his hands and tangles his fingers in her hair and it’s wonderful. He never touches her anywhere but her face, hair and waist except for once, when he runs his fingers lightly over her wrist in a way that makes her insides squirm and heat spread between her thighs. He seems slightly embarrassed by the gasp she gives and retreats for the rest of the day, but he returns again and again for more.

She mourns him too when he falls through the veil in the Department of Mysteries, but she mourns him with rage instead of tears. Bellatrix Lestrange – another _dear_ cousin – screams under her Cruciatus (love wasn’t the only thing that Barty taught her) and later, much later; when Dumbledore sits her down and explains in a grandfatherly voice that she must either die or become a murderess she lashes out and the ornaments and fiddly devices on his shelves explode in showers of sparks and silver wire. 

She doesn’t underestimate herself. She is more than capable of murder, however, at that moment, it isn’t Voldemort she wants to see dead at her feet. It’s Bellatrix most of all and Dumbledore – his scheming and plotting and conniving have all led to this point and she hates him for it.

The weight of the Black Lord’s ring replaces the one that Sirius slipped on her finger. It’s a larger version of the old, and it had the bad habit of getting tangled in her hair whenever Sirius kissed her. With it comes the golden stag and lion and the ruby stone of the Potters because the Black Lordship doesn’t care about age (the Blacks cared about little except power and purity) and now she’s Lady of one she’s the Lady of both.

Her Slytherin peers say nothing when Snape escorts her back into the common room. They glance at the rings and plot and scheme and she knows that they all know what has happened. She knows that they think they know what _will_ happen.

She knows that they are wrong.

** Blaise Zabini – 1996 **

Blaise escorts her to Slughorn’s little get together on the train and Slughorn’s eyes linger on the two of them most approvingly. She knows that they look beautiful together, but she also knows that Blaise is more interested in the rings that weigh heavily on her fingers and the financial ledgers Gringotts have sent her than in her for her own sake. 

Still, his presence by her side makes Granger’s eyes widen and her cheeks turn red, and it’s petty of her, she knows, but Charlotte still revels in it. The DA last year and Granger’s smug self-satisfaction throughout, not to mention some of her comments in Grimmauld Place, have made Charlotte disdain her far more than others. She wouldn’t spit on Granger if she was on fire at the moment, and she sincerely hopes that that knowledge is public.

She sits herself next to Blaise and smoothes out her skirt and charms Professor Slughorn with smiles and laughter and flashes of sapphire and ruby. It’s easy because he’s so eager to be charmed – he gathers all these talented children around him and he wants to be impressed so that he can use them to impress others. It’s _obvious_ , but unfortunate, because he’s so desperate to be impressed that he invited the she-Weasley just because he caught her hexing someone (fine teaching standards there, then) and Longbottom because of his parents.

(There’s a few others there for the same reason, and Charlotte suspects that he’s going to be truly, _deeply_ , disappointed in Belby.)

When she leaves the compartment, Granger hurries after her. She puts her hand on Charlotte’s arm and though her first instinct is to draw her wand and hex Granger’s hand bloody, she resists.

“Can I help you?” she asks instead.

“Why are you with _him_?” Granger asks, apparently under the notion that being the Girl-Who-Lived makes her answerable to any Gryffindor with enough nerve to approach. “He’s a bigot.”

Charlotte is well aware of that. She’s shared classes with Blaise Zabini for five years and knows that while Blaise is a lot quieter than Malfoy, he’s certainly not in disagreement with him. Most of her year mates are, in fact, of that opinion. Charlotte herself – having been brought up by the Dursleys and, therefore, suffered the worst that asinine middle-class Muggle suburbia is capable of – is probably a lot closer to that way of thinking than a lot of people (say, the Order) would be comfortable with.

“I know,” she says. “I just don’t particularly care. There are, after all, some qualities that can overcome such accidents of birth.” She twists her arm away from Granger’s grasp. “Don’t touch me again.”

…

Blaise accompanies her most places throughout the term, much to Millie’s amusement. “He’s judging you,” she says, and Charlotte knows that she’s right. Again, she doesn’t care. Blaise is nice enough when he wants to be, but he reminds her of a better looking, magical Piers Polkiss (and we know how _that_ went).

He escorts her to Slughorn’s little soirees, where they entertain themselves by listening to others make fools of themselves, and he escorts her to the Christmas party as well. He’s appreciative of her dark blue gown (Black family colours; she’s always felt closest to them) and an attentive enough date.

(Not as attentive as McLaggen appears to be, if Granger’s increasingly desperate escape attempts are anything to go by.)

They have fun in the manner that two intelligent, cunning people who don’t like each other very much tend to have when they’re together, and as the guests filter out, he leads her onto the balcony to look up at the stars.

“You remind me of my mother,” he says, and that – frankly – could be an insult as much as a compliment if what she’s heard about Imelda Zabini is true.

She raises an eyebrow and he coughs lightly into his fist. “You’re beautiful,” he says, “and dangerous. You’re the kind of beautiful that makes men willing to die for you; to launch armadas or fall on the sword, and you’re the kind of person who would find it entertaining.”

He’s not wrong. “How observant,” she says.

He smiles, and it’s sharp enough to draw blood from a weaker person. “I grew up with it,” he says. “And I know I can’t live like that, wondering if your next request will end with a dagger in my back.”

“Best marry a Hufflepuff, then,” she tells him. “I hear that they’re loyal.”

He laughs and she smiles and she rests her hand briefly on his own. “You’re wrong about one thing, though,” she says. “I’ll be the one launching my own armada.”

“I believe it,” he whispers. “Helen triumphant.” For a moment, she wonders if that has made him want to kiss her. He certainly looks like he does, but then he shakes his head and smiles oddly into the night. “That just makes you even more dangerous.”

She remembers Sirius. “Formidable,” she whispers back. “The Ladies of the House of Black always are.”

…

He stops hanging around her quite so much after that, but he’s an excellent study partner for Arithmancy so she doesn’t let go of him entirely and he allows her that. There aren’t many other people in Slytherin who are so unconcerned by the war (Dumbledore wants her to be concerned, as do the general public, but…well, spitting when on fire again) and the atmosphere in the common room is terrible.

She confronts Malfoy only once. He’s taken the Dark Mark and everyone knows it and he’s on some sort of mission if the rapid greying of his skin and the bags under his eyes are anything to go by, and that’s why she does it. 

“Is it an attack on the students?” she asks.

He’s reluctant to answer, but shakes his head in the end. She nods to him. “Have at it then, cousin,” she says because he is and because she’s no one’s hero. He jerks his head in return, in a gesture that could be respect or surprise, and after that they leave each other alone.

Sad how her supposed enemies understand her better than the one who wants her to fight for him. Dumbledore summons her repeatedly to talk about Horcruxes and memories and destiny, but all she can think is how Tom Riddle would have been attractive if it wasn’t for his penchant for self-mutilation (soul-splitting, how vile) and how he really, really shouldn’t have had Snape rape her mind in fifth year if he wanted to control her.

…

She watches Dumbledore die with something close to satisfaction, and she chases after the Death Eaters to get revenge for Sirius. She gets it, and Bellatrix Lestrange bleeds to death on the floor of the Great Hall, surrounded by broken glass. The other Death Eaters flee into the night, taking Malfoy and Snape with them and leaving a trail of broken (mostly Gryffindor) bodies in their wake.

She’s escorted to the hospital wing where people avoid looking at her and Delacour and Tonks make dramatic declarations of love and loyalty to their respective partners. Charlotte pulls the locket from the cave out of her pocket and opens it, and reads the note.

Whoever RAB was, she thinks she could have really liked him. No matter. He’s almost certainly dead.

She stays in the hospital wing too long. She gets invited to a wedding.

…

Blaise kisses her goodbye after Dumbledore’s funeral. It’s nothing special. He touches his lips gently to the corner of her mouth and she’s too surprised by it to protest.

“Prove that you’re dangerous,” he tells her. Well, no, he’s challenging her, really. She gives him a scathing look that she copied from a portrait and he actually winces a little, but after he backs off, she’s willing to admit that he might be right.

She needs to prove it, or Charlotte the Great will never be.

** Ignotus Peverell – 1998 **

“Ugly, isn’t it.”

Charlotte backs away from the thing under the bench and turns. Kings Cross has probably never been as clean as it is to her now, in her death, nor so empty. But for all that there are no commuters or trains, she isn’t alone. There’s the Horcrux from her scar, which has taken the form of a flayed baby and which wheezes pathetically where it lies, leaving smears of blood on the pristine floor, and there’s the man.

He’s short and thin with dark hair that curls around his collar and large, dark eyes. His old-fashioned robes are a strange shade of silver that reminds her of her invisibility cloak, and with his pale skin and delicate features, she thinks he’s the most beautiful man she’s ever seen. Pity that they’re both dead – she’s never seen him before in her life.

“Self-mutilation usually is,” she says. “Who are you?”

“Forgive me, my lady, I thought you would know. My name is Ignotus Peverell.”

She knows who that is. Was, rather. The last of the three brothers from legend. The brother who received the invisibility cloak (his robes really _are_ familiar) and a long life. He smiles thinly.

“I’m sure whatever you’ve heard of me is magnificent and entirely inaccurate,” he says. “Stories usually are.”

Charlotte remembers Rita Skeeter in fourth year and the _Prophet_ in fifth, and she has to concede the point. She takes his arm when he offers it, and allows him to guide her away from the Horcrux. She wonders why he is here instead of Sirius or Barty or even grandmother Dorea, who had all come when she called with the Resurrection Stone. It’s impolite to ask, so she doesn’t, but he somehow hears her anyway.

“Death is not a comfort for people like us, my lady, but the truth,” he says. “We’re forced to see ourselves as we truly are, and no familiar face or past lover can bring that. Not really.”

“People like us?” she asks.

His smile is slightly frightening, as if his bone structure is too close to the surface and she can see his skull through his skin. “Necromancers,” he says.

“I’m not a –“

“You mastered the Hallows, so whether you were before, you certainly are now,” he replies. “Try destroying them when you go back, if you don’t believe me. I tried. I burned the cloak and crushed the stone and snapped the wand and they all came back. They followed me through life until I could take life no more and they were taken up by my children instead.” His laughter is cold and slides like ice down her spine. “Sorry about that, my lady.”

He’s a distant ancestor, if the stories are anything to go by, so sorry is exactly what he should be.

“Go back?” she asks.

“Of course. You mastered death. You can do whatever you like with it.”

“Except bring back the people who are lost to it.” She meets his gaze frankly. “What use is that, then?”

“The purpose of death is always life,” he says. “Or so I’ve decided in the last six hundred years of thinking about it. Life, of course, has whatever purpose that you give it.”

She thinks about that. She thinks about a powerless little girl in a cupboard and poisoned apples and kisses hidden in darkened classrooms and libraries. She thinks about Dumbledore and Voldemort and his Horcruxes and the curl of Granger’s lip when she pronounces her a “conniving bitch”. Her whole life has been about gaining power through struggle and sacrifice and manipulation of the only thing she has going for her (Charlotte’s a terrible person beneath the pretty face and she knows it).

Peverell seems to know what she’s thinking and he pulls her gently into an embrace. He’s her height, which is odd – Sirius and Barty and Blaise were all taller – but it’s nice, because she can look right into his eyes and see the stars that linger there. He kisses her lightly on her forehead.

“You’ve got what you’ve always wanted, Charlotte the Great,” he says (and how does he know about that?), “so what are you going to do with it?”

…

Voldemort’s body begins to break apart after the last fragment of his soul has fled. She briefly wonders if it will ever be complete again or if the Horcruxes will forever remain weak, separated, bleeding things. The Elder Wand throbs in her hand and her knees weaken, but she refuses to fall, even as the wind lifts fragments of ash and Dark Lord and spins them through the air.

There’s no piece of apple in her throat to fake choking on this time. There’s the Wand in her hand and the Cloak in her pocket and the Stone digging into her breast from where she slipped it into her bra in the forest. There’s the rings of two great Wizarding families on her fingers. There’s power in her veins, not poison.

She’s Charlotte the Great and she’s completely, and utterly, alone.

She’s going to have to change that.


End file.
